I'm willing to make the trade-off. If we don't have copyright, then I'm okay with people distributing binaries without the source code. We're in a fundamental

I'm willing to make the trade-off. If we don't have copyright, then I'm okay with people distributing binaries without the source code. We're in a fundamentally different environment, and one that I think gives the correct freedoms. I should be able to make a binary and distribute it without the source. I should not be able to restrict what other people do with that binary, or source, if and when I give it to them. Economic models will evolve differently, for better or worse, but I don't think selecting business models should be the purpose of our laws. As for DRM -- I don't like it, I don't want it to exist, but I think people should be free to create it and build it into devices that they make and sell. Similarly, I should be free to reverse engineer it, hack it, do whatever I want with my products in my home, and share everything I know with others. No information lockdown. But instead we have this awkward copyright thing that limits our freedoms all over the place. So I'll abuse it with the GPL to help cultivate an ecosystem of works that protect freedoms, until we abolish copyright, and then we're in a different world altogether. Edit: Perhaps it was unfair when I wrote that without copyright, the GPL would not be necessary to protect those freedoms. I acknowledge that there are freedoms that the GPL assures to the recipients of a work that would not be automatically available without copyright for the work. However the whole system would be so different that I would no longer consider it necessary for something like the GPL to exist. Let's acknowledge however that it's reeeally hard to predict how things would evolve without copyright. I surely want it abolished and I surely wouldn't outright abolish it overnight! Slow ramp-up process.